Antron Brown wins NHRA Top Fuel championship

Antron Brown won the NHRA Top Fuel championship. Brandon Bernstein won the Top Fuel race at the Automobile Club of Southern California NHRA Finals. Tony Schumacher lost the final race and the Top Fuel championship by a fraction of a second.

Brown had to sit and watch as Schumacher advanced through the Top Fuel field and reached the final round. Brown lost in the first round after blowing up against Spencer Massey. He suffered burns on his hands and legs and wore gloves during his post-race news conference with reporters. He said the gloves were to protect his hands from small blisters that formed on them after his car exploded.

He also said he was ready to race again, despite the burns on his hands. But having to watch rather than race was painful in another way.

“Ain’t nothing you can do. Just sit and watch,” Brown said. “I felt like I was a kid back in elementary school when those days felt like they were 30 hours long. You want to race for it. You ask any racer out there, they don’t want to stay on the sidelines, waiting and hoping for someone to lose.”

Schumacher had to win the season finale to take what would have been his eighth Top Fuel championship. He met Bernstein in the final race.

Bernstein beat Schumacher off the line and held his lead across the finish line with a .037 seconds reaction time. He won by .009 seconds at 320.81 mph.

“Tony’s a class act,” Brown said. “They have no reason to hold their heads down. It just didn’t turn out like that this year.”

Brown is the first African-American driver to win an NHRA Top Fuel championship and the first African-American to win an auto racing championship in a major American racing series.

 “I certainly wanted Tony to win the championship,” team owner Don Schumacher said. “But certainly Antron and the Matco Tools deserved to win the championship. They had hiccups in both Las Vegas and here, first round. They came out here, they did it this year, they won the world championship. Antron is the NHRA Full Throttle Top Fuel world champion.”

Photo: Antron Brown became the first African-American to win the NHRA Top Fuel championship. (Credit: Tim Haddock)